Closing Down Your Therapy Space the Right Way

Picture it: it's late August/ early September, you've just walked back into your therapy room after 8 weeks away, and you immediately become furious with the version of yourself who left it that way.

Sound familiar?

Crumpled card decks. A half-eaten box of fish crackers fossilized to the shelf. Sticky notes with assessment scores you can no longer interpret. The good visuals you spent hours laminating in April are somewhere - but where?

Give future-you a gift. Spend two hours doing this right.

Here are the five moves we make before we leave for summer. None of them require a Pinterest board.

1. Triage the materials, ruthlessly

Walk through every shelf, bin, and drawer. Three piles only:

• Keep: used it this year, will use it again
• Donate or pass on: useful, not for your current caseload
• Toss: broken, missing pieces, no longer evidence-based, or you bought it in 2019 and have never opened the box

And be honest. The sentimental value of the worksheet pack you used your first year is not worth the shelf space.

2. Inventory and label the keepers

For everything you keep, do two things: confirm it has all its pieces and put it in a labeled container.

Clear bins are worth their weight in gold. So is a label maker, but a Sharpie works. The goal is that someone walking into your room — including August-you — can find the picture cards for /sh/ in under thirty seconds.

If a game or kit is missing a critical piece (the spinner, the dice, the last of a 50-card set), decide now: replace it, or retire it. Don't shelve it broken.

3. Reset your data and paperwork systems

Pull out your data binders, your Google folders, your goal trackers. Archive the year. Then build the empty version of next year's system before you leave.

That means: blank data sheets ready to go. Folders created. A naming convention you can actually remember in August. The 15 minutes you spend now will save you ninety minutes during the back-to-school chaos.

If your tracking system stopped working for you halfway through the year, this is the moment to redesign. It may seem like a good idea to put it off, but the beginning of the school year is not the time! We'll have more on this in our June 25 paid post (with a Progress Tracking Template you can lift).

4. Restock and replace before summer hits

Make a "first day of school" list right now, while the gaps are fresh in your head.

• Out of laminating sheets
• Need new dot stickers for the AAC binders
• That stim toy your student loved but you only had one of
• A new set of dry-erase markers because the current ones write in ghost

If your district has a budget submission window in early summer, this is the list you submit. If you're buying from your own pocket, at least the list exists when the back-to-school sales hit.

5. Leave a "letter to August me"

This is the cheat code. Take ten minutes. Write a one-page note to yourself.

What worked this year. What you want to change. Which students need a soft landing in September. Where the materials are. What the principal asked about that you forgot to follow up on. Where you put the spare keys to the locked cabinet.

Future-you will read it on the first PD day in August, and you will pat yourself on the back!

It may feel unnecessary now, but you will be giving your future self a calmer first week back.

Next Thursday is our first paid post of the month ... the burnout piece, with a Burnout Reset Workbook you can actually use this summer. Then on Monday, June 15, we're previewing our June Office Hour with Nikki Hunjan - therapy ideas and organization tips, live with our community. Save the date.